Chapter 57 #2
Her lips tilted into a heartbreakingly sad smile. “I think I do.”
He pinched the band between his fingers. “Give me your hand.”
Mariah looked up, holding his stare. Slowly, she raised her left hand.
And offered him the third finger.
The beat of his heart became a gallop. His lungs tightened and he shook his head on a reflex he couldn’t explain.
“You don’t want—”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Andrian.” Mariah’s gaze pierced him. “Do not tell me what I want or don’t want. I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out where I belong. It wasn’t until I met you that I realized I might have found it.”
His throat burned. Gods, whatever she saw in him, he didn’t understand it. He would never understand it.
But he would always and forever be grateful for it.
“Fine,” he said hoarsely. “But you know as well as I do, nio—Onitan queens don’t marry. Despite all these weak lords trying to control a powerful woman, there is no King of Onita.”
And if by some insane circumstance there could be, it would never be him. He was a cursed son with foreign blood. Despite that old name she called him sometimes—Rhoi, the one that meant king—the life flitting through his mind was nothing more than a distant, wild dream.
“I don’t care about any of that,” she whispered, pulling him away from a fantasy that could never be. “I never wanted to be Onita’s queen. Tonight, I want to forget that I am. Tonight, I just want to be yours.”
Andrian wasn’t sure who moved first.
Maybe they both did. Maybe something snapped, an arrow shot from the stars. One moment she was there, offering him her hand in a way that both healed and broke his heart, and the next they were wound together, hands buried in each other’s hair, lips catching the other’s sobs.
He pushed her back onto the piled pillows and blankets, sinking between her thighs as they wrapped around his hips.
He consumed her hungrily, lips and teeth grazing a path across her jaw, down the smooth column of her throat, over the line of her collarbones.
The sweet bite of jasmine swallowed him up, drowning out the lingering scent of the meadow’s snowdrop blossoms.
He pulled back, breathless, body buzzing. The way it always did with her. The way he could always feel his control stretching, thinning, breaking.
Andrian pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to her lips. Her cheeks were filled with that delicious flush of pink, and gods, he wanted to see it everywhere.
He found her left hand and brought it between them. A feral, ancient possessiveness swept through him as he gripped her third finger and slipped the silver ring over her knuckle.
He kissed her palm. “I want you to leave this ring on,” he murmured, “and take everything else off.”
Mariah’s flush deepened, and he couldn’t help his smirk.
He rose to his knees then to his feet. She sat up as well, lips tilting into a smirk.
She reached behind her head, pulling the tie to her dress.
The gauzy material fluttered off her in waves, pooling on the makeshift pallet.
The sweeping expanse of her skin was bared to him, shimmering softly in the moonlight.
Fucking gods.
She lifted her left hand, the small stone glittering. “I don’t usually like wearing jewelry,” she said, curling her toes into the soft furs. “But I agree, this one definitely looks best when I’m wearing nothing else.”
Andrian’s fingers were already working on the buttons of his shirt. He shrugged out of it, dropping it carelessly on the ground. His belt was next then the zipper to his trousers. His cock ached, but even that burned pleasure up his spine.
“Most clothing and adornments on you are fine, but they hide too much of you.”
Her smirk tugged higher. “Oh, yeah? But my mother’s ring really does it for you?”
“No longer your mother’s ring.” He pushed down his trousers, cock finally springing free.
Feral need surged through him when her eyes dropped, expression heating.
“Yours.” He fell to his knees, then to all fours.
“And no longer something to be hidden.” He crawled forward, catching her leg in his hand, nose running a path up her inner thigh.
“Yours,” he repeated, spreading her legs, settling himself between them. “And mine.”
His mouth met her center, her back arching off the furs. Her sweetness flooded his mouth, and he drew in a great, desperate breath.
He didn’t think there was anything the gods could create in the afterlife that was better than this. No heavenly flavor, no nectar or fruit or wine that could compare. She was jasmine and cedarwood and honey, something rich and womanly and laden with starlight.
He consumed her as he always did—like a man starved, desperate for a morsel of his next meal. He wasted no time, didn’t bother taunting or teasing her.
He’d tortured himself for too long, denying himself. He wanted to make her come quickly, to make her so perfectly ready for him, because by now he was afraid he would die if he had to spend a single moment longer not buried deep inside her.
Gods, he’d even gotten jealous of his fucking shadows. That was how out of his mind with desperation he was.
Her hand found his hair, tightening around the strands. Her thighs clenched on either side of his head. He played her like an instrument, using teeth and tongue and fingers until her soft heady gasps filled the clearing.
The taste of her release was the sweetest morsel of all. He could die between these thighs.
But he had plenty more living to do first.
He rode with her through her release, until her trembling subsided and her gasps quieted. He wiped his face on the soft skin of her inner thigh and crawled up her taut, muscular body. She watched him with hooded eyes as his lips closed around a nipple, her mouth parting when he gently nipped.
“It’s your night, nio,” he murmured against her skin. “But I want nothing more than to be inside you. So how will you have me?”
Mariah was still for a moment before gripping the back of his head, pulling him up to her face. His cock nudged her slick entrance, and he hissed when her hand wrapped around the length.
“Just like this,” she said in that husky, pleading voice.
Who was he to deny her?
He pushed slowly inside, and he swore his vision blurred.
She took all of him so fucking well, like she was made just for him. His hands wrapped around the strands of her dark hair, his tongue licking up the column of her throat.
He moved, and she moved, and they moved together. The world became nothing more than sweet oblivion. Moonlight caressed his back, her nails dug into his shoulders, the mewls slipping from her throat better than any music.
Her eyes fluttered open. An emotion too deep and impossible to describe reflected in her green eyes.
She didn’t need to describe it. He felt it, too.
“I need you closer,” she whispered. “I need you everywhere.”
Fuck. His grip around her tightened, lips capturing hers with a low, feral growl. He pulled them both up, rocking back on his heels and keeping her pinned to his lap, still buried inside her. Deeper now. Closer.
She broke their kiss with a gasp. Her head tilted back, up to the sky and moons and stars. He kissed the curve of her neck, inhaling deep lungfuls of that scent as he moved her over him.
“Everything about you,” he murmured, “is perfect.”
“Not perfect,” she answered breathlessly. “Just yours.”
He didn’t have it in him to argue. Not when she tightened around him, her next release washing over her. His vision blackened at the sensation, the feeling, the perfection of it all.
He was close, too. He could feel it, the way pleasure was starting to coil lower down his spine. His mind was awash with moonlight and jasmine and forest green, everything around him beating in time with his heart in his chest, a chant of her name in his very soul.
Mariah. Mariah. Mariah.
He didn’t even realize she’d pushed him onto the furs until his back hit the softness. His hands found her thighs, savoring her firm and smooth skin. Through hooded eyes he watched her brace against his legs, arching up toward the sky as she rode him.
She dropped her gaze to him, and he saw his heart reflected there.
“Your shadows,” she whispered, the flush across her chest deepening.
She didn’t need to say it twice.
His magic jumped from his skin, coiling around her legs. One tendril found her clit, so close to that place where they were joined. And the sensation of it all, of touching her all over while being seated and moving so deep inside her…
Release slammed into him just as she tightened around him again, and together they crashed off a mountaintop of feelings too deep and complicated and perfect to describe.
He didn’t know how long it took to come back to his body. Minutes? Hours?
All he knew was when he finally came to and found her collapsed on his chest, face notched into his neck, he never wanted to move.
She lifted her head, finding his gaze.
“I hope you know,” she said huskily, “that you have a couple of weeks to make up for. And there is still plenty of moonlight left.”
He chuckled. “A couple of weeks? Don’t you remember, nio: even after a lifetime, I’ll never be sated.”
The stars above couldn’t rival her answering smile, the tension and pain of the past months melting into the night as Andrian once again lost himself in the light of his personal moon.